I do work at Tweetsie and would love to see either a Gravity Group woodie or even a small-scale GCI built on the hill under/near the chairlift. RollerBee is correct though; I speak to Chris Robbins on occasion and his current vision for the park is to basically leave it the way it is. Working there and interacting with our guests on a daily basis, I can see why. There are constantly grandparents bringing their grandkids and bragging to them about how they remember riding the exact same Ferris Wheel (my baby haha) when they were a kid. It, along with many other rides at the park have their own history and are as old as the park itself. Not all parks are destined to be Cedar Point, or even Knoebels. If money were no object and concern for guest expectations weren't present, I could see Tweetsie becoming another Dollywood within the next 20 years, but its not going to happen. While I would love to see the park I live 5 minutes from grow, I respect the vision that the Robbin's have for the place.
As for the kiddie coaster, Tarheel is right! It's an extremely unknown thing because it's not documented on RCDB or any other coaster site, but there is one old photograph of it hidden within Tweetsie's website, you just gotta know where to dig. But anyway, here it is. It used to sit in between the Wheel and the car track, where the midway games building now stands.
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Fun, off topic fact, our Ferris Wheel was built by Eli Bridge Company in 1955 and originally operated at The Blowing Rock until 1957 when it was relocated to Tweetsie. It is a cable-driven wheel (which means that there is a steel cable wrapped around the entire outside of the Ferris Wheel) instead of your more modern rim-driven wheels (such as the wheel at Dollywood). While Eli Bridge still manufactures parts for their cable-driven models, they do not produce the wheels themselves anymore because they can be a pain in the butt to operate. It runs off of a clutch system and the wheel must be more or less balanced at all times in order for it to have the counter weight of other people to propel itself around. I am currently one of only about 6 or 7 people at the park that can operate it. It is physically and mentally challenging, and due to this, Eli Bridge decided to cease manufacturing them. And for anyone who's ever ridden our wheel, you are very aware that is it freaking fast! It is actually the fastest Ferris Wheel on the east coast at nearly 25ish MPH, depending on how much weight it has on it and how well balanced it is. It is about 43 feet tall.
